


The Night Watchman

by Jessa



Series: Multi-chapter WIPS [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, finnlo - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Fluff and Smut, BDSM, Dom/sub, Dubcon use of the Force (Kylo tries to help Finn), Explicit Language, Finn names himself, HEA, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Kylo/Ben and Finn help each other, Love, M/M, NSFW, Nipple Play, Painplay, Panic Attacks, References to self-harm, Safewords, Slow Burn, The Force, dom!finn, finnlo, flagrant use of italics, sub!kylo/ben but kylo is a bit of a switch, tags will change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-04 17:45:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17309030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessa/pseuds/Jessa
Summary: Diverting after the raid at Tuanul, FN-2187 is tasked with punishing Kylo Ren for failing to acquire the droid with the map to Skywalker. Sent to an island on Kashyyyk, both men struggle with the Darkness in themselves as they work towards a common endgame.





	1. Curious

**Author's Note:**

> At times this fic might be difficult to read. Please read the tags carefully before starting. Feel free to get in touch if you want to talk about any of it. I'm Jessa on Discord.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Night 1. Part 1 of 3.

The moons have already emerged in the night sky above the archipelago and FN-2187 stands beneath them, just beyond the entrance to Kylo Ren’s makeshift living quarters. With his back to the sleeping chamber, he stares out towards where he knows the ocean that surrounds the Wartaki Islands lies and listens to the faint lap it makes against a shoreline he can’t see.

From here at his station 2187 can’t see Ren either - he’s still in the ‘fresher - but he can hear the sounds of desalinated water falling as his superior washes inside the simple bathroom. He’s not been told much about the mission, only that he’s here to monitor Ren for particular kinds of nighttime activity, and under very strict orders not to talk to him or make any kind of physical contact.

FN-2187 returns his modulated gaze to the night. Parts of the sky are heavy with rain that doesn’t seem to want to fall yet. The moisture hangs in the air, it’s humid, and the inside of his helmet is no less so. He longs to take it off but he can’t without an order. Thirsty already he attempts to wet his mouth but it’s as dry as the ground he stands on.

He swallows with difficulty and tries to put his own needs out of his mind again by allowing his attention to wander back to the makeshift quarters. None of the division are supposed to look too long, it might promote a breach in Ren’s protocol - which they’ve been told has been strictly set and which they’ve been specially trained to correct if necessary - but 2187 is curious.

The interior looks comfortable enough, especially considering this is meant to be some kind of punishment. All of Ren’s basic amenities are provided for here, including a place where he can prepare simple meals and eat. It certainly looks one hell of a lot plusher than where 2187 will sleep in eight hours time when this shift ends and the moons have set.

But 2187 won’t cry foul, he recommits, as he returns his attention to the night, still grateful to Ren for not passing on what he witnessed on Jakku. At least he assumes that’s what’s happened - that he’s not yet been reported on - because he’s not yet been punished for failing to follow Ren’s order to kill civilians in that terrible desert. He steals another glance inside the tent.

Kylo stands on the side of the bed that’s furthest from the entrance, eyes cast to the floor and hands clasped left over right in front of his bare body. The privilege of clothing has been denied by his Master for the duration of the punishment. When he completes this penance that will be restored but for now his pride is stripped, and the state of his body is to remind him of that.

He knows what he needs to do here, and he wants to do it. Kylo wants to atone, he’s ashamed of what he’s done - or failed to do - and he understands his Master’s generosity in granting him any sensory liberties at all while here, only denying him two. In preparation he’s been physically trained to appreciate this as a mercy. Eyes still on the floor he tries to ignore how much that appreciation still smarts.

Kylo turns his attention to the low, sturdy mattress, folding down the top bedding and slipping himself beneath just a cool cotton sheet. He lays down on his belly, careful to avoid lying on the still tender skin across his back. After several minutes he rolls to his side, testing. Relative comfort remains, the pain is still bearable; he doesn’t feel it too much in this position, either. His eyes wander from the other side of the bed to the stormtrooper beyond it. Kylo knows who he is.

He tries and fails to rid his mind of FN-2187. When he left the ‘fresher he sensed the change in guard he’s been waiting for all day, and Kylo still senses his struggle; in 2187 there is still a certain level of conflict, and it’s not a thing he wants to increase. It’s not a thing he wants to bait or encourage by returning the furtive glances, because he knows where that will lead - and he’s keenly aware of the training they’ve received, and knows what that will entail - but at the same time he can’t deny it: Kylo is interested.

He adjusts the position of his head on the pillow, sharpening his view of the stormtrooper with the conscience: his carefully selected night watchman. It’s almost humorous, the nervousness in him; the way he sometimes turns his head just enough to catch a peripheral view through his helmet, then quickly turns away again, as though ashamed. He’s dedicated to the training. Is he atoning too? Perhaps for what happened on Jakku? And is he only obligated by duty? Kylo sighs and lets his troubled eyes close.

FN-2187 turns once more to the night, to catch some breeze he hopes is on the air, but there’s none yet. He longs for the rain to bring relief from both the heat and the oppressive humidity, as 2187 begins to wonder if the climate here will always be like this. If he’ll even last a night in these conditions, let alone five. And as he does another thought emerges, a new awareness: Ren seems to have stilled.

Has he finally fallen asleep? He’s tossed and turned for long enough. FN-2187 openly studies his superior now, the longest look he’s taken since this watch first began. Through the glances he’s noticed a little about him already - the fact he’s human and the marks that still look raw across his back - and now he can’t seem to help but notice several other things, too.

His apparent age is one; is he surprised Ren seems not so much older than himself? And he’s physically alluring; his body is _thicc_ and long and the sheet he covered himself initially with has worked its way so far down his frame now the upper folds of fabric begin halfway down his hips, and the lower ones end not much further. There’s just a thin strip of it, really, remaining to barely conceal his groin and reveal the muscular curve of his backside, arcing away towards the other side of the room.

FN-2187 imagines the view from there as he tries and fails again to ignore the density of the air around them, the sticky vapor. It’s far too hot and much too wet and his helmet is really unbearable now, and Ren is still laid down so quiet on the bed. So 2187 thinks about doing it, just for a moment. Just to get cool, and just to gain some relief from the heat and the stifling humidity. It really is just to cool down, and he’ll put it back on very soon.

Slowly he removes his helmet, and far too curious not to Kylo opens his eyes to look.


	2. Strip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Night 1. Part 2 of 3.

FN-2187 tilts his head back in praise of the cool air bathing his sweat-laden skin. His core temperature seems to plummet by tens of degrees each time he fills his lungs, even though really the change must be marginal but it doesn’t feel like that now. For minutes 2187 just stands there breathing, the helmet still held out in front of his armoured chest until the sounds of his own deep respiration merge with something else.

He freezes. That is not the sound of a person asleep. That is certainly the purposeful whisper of bedding, and there’s not a whole lot of it left over there on that bed now, he knows that for a fact. Because 2187 has been very carefully monitoring the state of that, and noises like that can surely only be made by the last of it, finally hitting the floor to join all the rest.

He should put it back on. He really should. He should just put the damn helmet straight back on - never mind this heat, it’s not worse than what he knows he’ll end up doing to Ren if he doesn’t - and walk outside and pretend like nothing just happened. Just walk outside and wait for the rain which he can smell is about to start anyway. And then everything will be fine.

Because that sweet scent is on the air, that only planets like this one make where there’s organic life about to open up for it; he remembers well the smell of petrichor. Something about it is reassuring, as though he’s always known that smell. If he were outside in that his head would surely be clearer and he wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing now, which is not returning his helmet. Not returning his helmet in order to just keep on smelling that scent but to also keep watching.

And Kylo likes watching him back. But it’s not just that. Kylo likes watching his eyes, he realises now he’s spent so many minutes just lying here staring at them, because they seem as unpredictable as everything else about him. FN-2187’s eyes have not dashed back to Kylo on the bed, as Kylo thought they might; instead those eyes have slunk there, as Kylo hoped they would, and he decides now that he likes that much better. This slow thing with his eyes that 2187 is still doing now is a burn.

It’s not a glance anymore. It’s nothing like the quick ones 2187 was throwing across the room at him earlier, before he revealed his face. Before their eyes really met. It’s a smoulder, a real one, not a made-up thing in his head. But Kylo’s unsure about whether or not it’s purposeful because _fuck,_ maybe 2187 just looks like this all the time.

Kylo would take that look just a little of the time, which is probably more likely - could someone walk around just looking that hot all the time? - because Kylo can still feel how torn 2187 is, between wanting to break from his training and wanting to think for himself, and Kylo feels oddly at ease about that. There’s something very familiar there about that, and Kylo is very interested in it. In learning more about it.

“Sir?”

 _Shit,_ Kylo thinks, as the voice and the eye contact trigger his conditioning - the way his Master prepared him before he was accompanied here to the islands - and Kylo’s stomach clenches as the marks across his back start to talk to him, reminding and warning him not to encourage this: conversation.

Because this is baiting. That’s what this is. This is setting him up for punishment and Kylo could do something about that. Something much more than just ignore this attempt to make him self-sabotage, maybe by just rolling over, as painful as that would probably be, to face the other side of the room; turn his back on 2187. But he’d prefer not to because the view from here is nice and it could get a lot nicer. Maybe he could turn the tables on this. He thinks again about his night watchman’s conflict.

Carefully, not wanting to disturb the healing skin that’s settled down quite a bit in the time he’s been laid out so still on the bed, Kylo turns his body, reversing its position so that now his head is closest to his guard and his feet are where his head’s just been. Still bare with no top bedding, Kylo lays on his belly, supported by his forearms, his chest slightly raised and with nothing at all between himself and the stormtrooper now. Just open space.

Before Kylo moved the men could still look at each other, but then it was easy to avert eyes, or simply to make it look that way. Now they can openly stare at each other and it’s impossible actually for Kylo not to. So that’s what Kylo does. He stares at the unmasked stormtrooper at the entrance and 2187 stares right back, his helmet still held out in front. He looks nervous. Kylo likes that. He likes that a lot.

“Come here,” he says to FN-2187, very softly from across the dark room.

It’s not an order, although it technically is. This man is Kylo Ren, even though he’s under guard, but 2187 knows exactly how an order sounds and it sure as hell doesn’t sound anything like that.

That was a suggestion. That was like a thought 2187 might have had himself. Like a formative idea that might have emerged from his own head; Ren said it just like that. And because he said it just like that, 2187 really does want to go over there now, because what if that was actually…?

There’s something about that soft voice saying those words that doesn’t make him want to refuse, that only makes him want to do exactly what it’s almost asked him to. And now, as 2187 fights the urge not to replay Ren’s first words to him again in his head, to indulge in them, he’s undecided as to whether or not that was in fact an invitation.

Kylo can see the struggle again in the eyes of 2187, and he’s sure it’s that. There’s hesitation there again, he can see it. He doesn't need to glean it from doing as much as sensing anymore; Kylo can read him just by looking, but it’s passing. Is he reaching acquiescence now? Or is it agreement? It’s one of those. Kylo knows because 2187 is crossing the floor.

“Take that off,” Kylo says, in the same soft and suggestive voice when 2187 reaches his bedside.

Does he mean the armour? Or everything? The helmet is tucked by now beneath his arm, maybe Ren just means _set that down?_ FN-2187 sets his helmet down on the floor by the bed and Kylo watches, as carefully as he has for the whole night so far.

“No,” Kylo murmurs. “Not that. I meant _strip.”_


	3. Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Night 1. Part 3 of 3.

This is the start of it then. It has to be. FN-2187’s been waiting on the reprimand for Jakku; Ren must have reported him after all because you don’t defy a command and not get punished for it, not in the First Order.

So that must be why he's here, why they’ve withheld so much from him already - apart from a handful of things, including how to punish Ren for a breach - because this is not a privilege. This is not a break for five nights from being asked to do terrible things like kill innocent people; this is supervision of the punishment of someone within the organisation and, if the need arises, administration of consequences for breaching a punishment's protocol. For 2187, this _is_ punishment.

But it’s still not been given like an order should: _Strip._

It’s possible that even when giving orders Ren never says them as though they are; that this soft and highly suggestive thing he keeps doing with his voice and his eyes is actually a management style. Unlikely, but possible. Plus, Ren can use the Force, right? Is he using it now to try to get what he wants? To wrest compliance? Is that how the Force works?

FN-2187 frowns down at his superior, naked on the bed on his belly. He mulls the likelihood over as Ren looks back, like a big benign cat from the bed, his hands stretched out in front like paws as his elbows bear the weight of proud shoulders. It’s another invitation and that means 2187 gets to choose how he responds to it.

“No,” he says firmly to Ren. “No, sir.”

Kylo doesn’t smile but the corners of his mouth do twitch just a little. Earlier the idea he could call the stormtrooper here to him was interesting, and the notion he might approach him just a fantasy; Kylo never thought he’d actually do it but he did, and that’s complicity, isn’t it? That’s not just disobedience, that’s conspiracy. Consorting to breach. They’ve both breached. So why is 2187 now saying _no?_

“You have to,” Kylo says, after several more moments of thinking, and in the end resolving to alter his tactic. “I’m your superior. Do it.”

“You’re under watch,” the stormtrooper parries, with no hesitation. “You can’t order me, I order you. Sir.”

Something in the region of Kylo’s stomach flips, and all of a sudden he finds he no longer cares who’s breaching what and why. He just wants 2187 to say that again.

“Strip,” Kylo murmurs.

“No,” he repeats. “So stop baiting. You do that one more time and I’ll report you for answering back. I know the conditions they’ve set for you and what constitutes a clear violation, and it's this. This conversation. It's over, sir, quit it."

Kylo hung something on every single word of that retort, every defiant syllable. He can hear his heart hammering as shakily he releases the lungful of air he’s been holding. When did he start doing that?

“That’s not what you’re meant to do if I breach protocol,” Kylo somehow manages to say in the breath as it leaves him.

“I’ll punish you then. Sir.”

“I don’t think you would,” Kylo whispers. “I don’t think you have that in you.”

He reaches down for the cotton sheet, still lying in a rumpled heap at the foot of the bed. FN-2187 doesn’t avert his eyes as Kylo lifts it in a mood from the floor while lifting himself to his knees, completely exposed to the stormtrooper now and making no effort to hide it.

FN-2187 watches him carefully, his body bathed in the ambient light filtering in through the entrance behind them. It veils the whole room in a hue that’s faintly copper, the colour of the combined light of all three of Kashyyyk’s moons as their luminescence filters through the storm clouds, still hanging heavy as both men wonder what to do with each other next. They’ve reached an impasse.

Eventually Kylo settles himself back down on the bed, face down with the sheet slung high on his hips as though preparing to sleep, shifting his arms beneath the pillow and adjusting his cheek above its firm surface until he’s still. And he stays that way and FN-2187 continues to watch him.

His superior’s impressive size seems completely at odds with the wounds across his back. FN-2187 wonders if the marks have been treated since he suffered them. They’re not open wounds, but they do look painful. As the first drops of rain begin to fall somewhere, and their sweet scent is brought inside the makeshift room by a gentle breeze, 2187 begins to consider it: _strip._

Because he’d like to feel more of that breeze across his sweat-soaked skin. The body glove is sticky, dripping with moisture. Very slowly he begins to remove the pieces of white plastoid armour from his body and lay them down on the floor near the helmet he’d placed there not so long ago. And it does start to feel good, shedding that layer.

Kylo doesn’t turn his head throughout any of this. He’s still belly down, face turned to the wall, but he can feel the stormtrooper’s weight shifting across the mattress when 2187 eventually mounts it, and then fatefully that weight settles across the small of Kylo's back and knees settle just beneath the pits of his arms. Face down on the bed, Kylo’s mobility is not so limited that he can’t shift his upper body in order to spy the bare knees that have straddled his torso.

“Rain,” whispers FN-2187.

Kylo murmurs in agreement of the safeword, but doesn’t make a sound when the stormtrooper runs the back of his nail along one of the existing surface cuts that pattern his back, but he only does it once because that’s all he can manage. After that it all becomes too much and he stops, with no safeword said and instead of continuing - as he knows he should - 2187 goes to fetch the medkit.

And that’s how Kylo Ren and FN-2187 spend the rest of their first night together on the island; Kylo face down on the bed and his night watchman sitting beside him, applying bacta to the wounds across his back, as together they listen to the sounds of the rain drum down heavy on the canvas roof above them.


	4. Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Night 2. Part 1 of 3.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sub-plot of this night has been re-worked since it first posted. This is a re-post.

FN-2187 ducks beneath the canvas awning just outside the entrance to Ren’s makeshift living quarters. He huddles there from the monsoon, soaked to the skin with rain, and growing cold.

He still hasn’t reported Ren’s breach. Did he breach again today? Should 2187 have asked someone about that? He probably should have, handovers were part of the training...

His troubled eyes shift to his superior. He’s not yet in bed and 2187 wonders why not as he studies him, sitting on the edge of the mattress combing fingers through his damp hair. He must have just showered but although Ren is naked he doesn’t look cold. He looks very, very warm actually. Shivering, 2187 tries to push that thought from his mind and attempts to pull his eyes away from Ren.

Kylo is sensing his thoughts.

“You’re cold,” he says very softly from the bed, his back still to the soldier.

FN-2187 grimaces, because he is cold. He’s _damn_ cold actually.

“Use the ‘fresher,” Kylo suggests. “You need to get warm, you can’t stand there all night shivering.”

Kylo lifts his bare feet from the floor and lies down on the bed. He can barely feel the wounds now. There’s less need to be careful with them. For not the first time today his mind drifts back to last night and the memory of 2187’s gentle hands on his skin, treating him. He’d like to feel those hands again. Kylo rolls over to face him.

“At least admit you feel cold,” Kylo presses, when the soldier’s stony silence continues.

FN-2187 takes a very quick glance outside. Then he removes his helmet and returns his gaze to Ren.

“Alright,” he says quietly from his post. “I _am_ cold and you _are_ right. And now I am also _talking_ to you again, but this is a _warning_ and I am only gonna give it to you once, sir. If you keep going - if you keep talking to me like this - you know what will happen to you so please just _stop it.”_

“Okay,” Kylo answers. “Be stubborn then.”

The stormtrooper sighs, glances out the door again and then he walks quickly to Ren.

“Why are you doing this?” he hisses. “Why are you _really_ doing this? You _want_ to be punished, is that it?”

Kylo frowns. “I thought you knew why I was here.”

“Answer my question, sir.”

“They didn’t tell you why I’m here?”

FN-2187 rolls his eyes.

 _Who’s stubborn now?_ he thinks to himself.

FN-2187 tries to leave it there. At just that one wry thought. To bite his tongue. The temptation to answer is too great, though. To get in just one more word, or maybe thirty-five because once 2187 gets on a roll he finds it hard to stop. And something about this bothers him. He’s not quite sure what. If it’s something about Ren - how he’s behaving - or something about himself. His own behaviour. His lack of self-discipline. Ren’s getting under his skin, again.

“I _don’t_ know why you’re here, sir, no,” the stormtrooper finds himself saying. “I have _no fucking idea_ why you’re here, actually, to be very honest with you. I’m just a _stormtrooper,_ I’m not even a Captain. They don’t tell people like me _anything._ What you did had something to do with Jakku, right? That’s all I know. You fucked something up on Jakku. Right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Well, _what_ was it? What did you do wrong?”

Kylo goes silent.

“Oh, _now_ you’re gonna stop talking?” the stormtrooper almost chuckles. “Well, that’s just great. That’s just fucking wonderful, sir.”

He does chuckle then, but it’s a very dry sound.

“Well, you know what?” he continues. “You can tell me or you can keep it to yourself, I don’t really care, with all due respect, sir. Just stop trying to get me to talk back to you, because I can’t do to you what comes after that. Are you hearing me? I mean, have they actually told you what we’re here to do to you if you breach your protocol? And just so we're on the same planet, it's  _not_ what happened last night.”

“No, they haven’t. But I’m… aware.”

“What?” the soldier frowns, confused. Is Ren talking about the Force?

Ren goes quiet again and 2187 continues to frown at him, his eyes flicking around the passive expression on his face, trying to glean something from it. But Ren remains closed. He’s not giving away anything now.

“Well,” 2187 continues, more quietly this time and a little unsure, but still determined to say it, “If you’re referring to what I think you are, then maybe you already know that I don’t want to punish anyone, sir, and that includes you. I don’t want to be, but I _am_ here, and I'm struggling with that. But I am here in a way to _protect_ you. It’s _prevention._ Have they even explained that to you?”

“Yes, just not in so many words…”

“It’s to prevent you from doing more of whatever it is you did,” 2187 ploughs on, ignoring the hint of snark and the reference to the wounds on Ren’s back, because he thinks that’s what that was, that last part. “But if I can _avoid_ punishing you...”

“So what if I told you what I did?” Kylo murmurs from the bed. “Would that change your mind? _Then_ would you want to do it? And not just avoid it?”

“Want to do what? Punish you?”

“Yes,” Kylo says. “If I said I wanted it, then would you do it?”

“You _did_ say that. And I did do it. I did it last night.”

“You just admitted you didn’t do it properly.

FN-2187 huffs, growing impatient.

“So,” Kylo says quietly, when the stormtrooper adds nothing further. “You can do it again, then. Right? Maybe this time _properly...”_

“Are you _really serious?”_

FN-2187 throws his helmet to the ground in frustration.

“I mean, for fuck’s sake _this is not a game,”_ he seethes. “Are you even aware that I just nearly drowned on the way over here to watch you? That there’s a _monsoon_ out there right now? Sir, I’m not cold I’m fucking _freezing,_ and you’re breaking conditions like you don't even care, with no regard for why you shouldn’t be, or for what I will have to do because of that. With what _any_ of us will have to do because of that. You seem to have no concern for yourself, and you also seem to have even less for the people here charged with supervising you. People charged with _protecting you from yourself._ Because _that’s_ what _they_ are, beneath all _this…”_

He taps the white plastoid armour still guarding his chest.

 _“...People._ You need to remember that, and you need to stop doing _this._ _All_ this... Pushing the boundaries... Acting like the rules don’t apply to you, or that you're... alone. That your actions stop with you. They _don't,_ so _stop thinking like that._  And you also have to remember that _I’m in charge_ here, sir, not you. So  _start listening."_

“Stop calling me _sir.”_

“Oh for Maker’s sake…”

FN-2187 turns his back on his superior and begins to walk back to his post, collecting the helmet from the floor on the way. Kylo rolls over.

“And I was listening,” 2187 hears Ren mumble from the bed. “I don’t want you to be cold. That’s all.”


	5. Finn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Night 2. Part 2 of 3.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning, there's a very mild reference to self-harming in this chapter.
> 
> Special thanks to Alsterwasser for pre-reading this re-worked chapter for me, and assuring me it fit with what came before this one. Really helpful, thank you again.

_Breathe,_ Kylo reminds himself.

Is he starting to panic? He starts the count again, returning his hand to the mattress, and moving his palm across the cotton sheet beneath him. It’s not smooth. There’s a tooth to the texture. Almost rough. Uniform, maybe woven, and raised in one place or two. Those places break the monotony. They’re different, and they feel that way. Such subtle changes he’d never notice unless he did this. Stopped and paid attention. To the way things feel. And now, to the way things sound.

Kylo’s been hearing this sound for longer than he’s been aware.

“Sir?”

He frowns because the sound is almost as close as the sheet beneath his skin, and that doesn’t seem right. How long has he been doing this for? Kylo opens his eyes and rolls over. The stormtrooper has sat down, on the entrance side of the bed. He’s no longer dressed. He’s looking down at Kylo.

“How long have you been sitting there?” Kylo asks him.

“A few minutes,” the stormtrooper answers.

“You washed already?”

FN-2187 takes a deep breath.

“No, just used your sonic. To dry everything out, and myself. You know, because you said…”

“You gonna dress?”

“Well,” 2187 says quietly, “Maybe.”

Kylo swallows. What the fuck does he mean by that? The soldier is taking another breath now. Is he going to expand on that?

“I don’t really sleep so well in daytime,” the stormtrooper says.

Okay. Yes, he is.

“You don’t?” Kylo asks.

“No,” 2187 answers. “Well, not on planets. It’s too bright, I’m too used to ships. Do you find that here? You can’t sleep? Actually, you did sleep last night...”

Kylo absorbs that for a moment. Two things. The first is that he slept. He doesn’t usually. And the second is…

“You noticed that?”

“Well, that’s what I’m here to do,” the stormtrooper answers. “I’m here to watch you. To notice. That’s my job.”

Kylo’s breath catches.

“I don’t usually sleep like that,” he admits.

“Why not?”

Kylo considers his answer for several minutes.

“I don’t know,” he says eventually. “Sometimes I just… can’t.”

“Maybe you sleep better on planets. Maybe you just don’t sleep well on ships. We might be the reverse. Have you always lived on ships?”

Kylo goes quiet.

“Don’t wanna talk about that, huh?” 2187 notes. “Okay.”

They both go quiet for a little while, until it's Kylo, this time, who starts up again, cautiously.

“So,” he says, feeling awkward but wanting to say _something._ Maybe wanting to _ask_ something. To ask the stormtrooper something _else._ To hear a voice again, unmodulated. A person's voice. _This_ person's voice. “You’re dry now?”

“Yes,” the stormtrooper says.

“Warm?”

“Warmer.”

“And you didn’t sleep at all in the day?” Kylo asks, feeling very foolish now and still nervous, but liking more and more the sound of the voice that keeps sounding back, with less hesitation now. It's still there, that initial conflict, but it's lessening in the soldier, slowly but surely.

“No.”

“Tired?”

“It’s not so bad. I’m okay. I mean, I had a lot of caf, before I ran through the rain…”

“Do you wanna sleep?”

“Well, yeah,” 2187 answers, carefully. “I mean, I usually sleep pretty well. So long as it’s not daytime and I’m not on a planet. I would like to sleep some more, yes.”

The stormtrooper gives him a very small smile, and Kylo finds himself staring.

“You can sleep here if you want to,” he whispers.

“Someone’s checking up on me, I shouldn’t.”

“They’re not,” Kylo whispers again.

“What?”

“They’re not. They’re not checking up on you.”

“How do you know?”

Kylo’s still staring. He’s probably said too much. That was probably weird, mentioning that.

“Nevermind.”

Has Kylo troubled him? The stormtrooper’s not frowning, but his eyes are wide, as though he’s thinking. Kylo could sense him again, he supposes. Find out. But the soldier’s still here, on the bed. He hasn’t walked away, like he did before. Maybe...

“Is that how you know someone’s not checking up on me?”

“Huh?”

Kylo must have zoned right out for a minute there.

“The _Force?”_ the stormtrooper whispers. “Is that how you know…?”

“Something like that,” Kylo murmurs. “Whoever it is checking up on you… I’m telling you, they’re not where they’re supposed to be, either.”

Kylo does start to sense him now, and in response to what he feels he shifts a little towards the edge of the far side of the bed, making room. Slowly, FN-2187 slides between the sheets.

 _Breathe,_ Kylo reminds himself for the second time, because he seems to have stopped that again.

“What should I call you?” 2187 asks.

“Huh?”

Kylo’s heart is racing. It’s getting difficult to think again. Out of habit he flattens his palm to the sheet beneath him, and starts to feel its weave. Maybe, instead of the places where the cotton sheet pills, he could count the threads this time...

“Well, if you’re really serious about not wanting me to call you _sir_ anymore,” the stormtrooper continues, “Then I need to know what to call you instead. I mean, that’s just protocol. I need to address you as _something.”_

“Do _you_ have a name?”

“FN-2187,” the stormtrooper answers. “Do you want me to call you _Ren?”_

“No,” Kylo frowns. “And don’t change the subject, I asked you first.”

“I asked _you_ first, actually.”

Kylo adjusts his position in the bed. They’re still facing each other, but he shifts his head as well as the pillow beneath it, so that now he can look directly into the eyes of the soldier lying opposite, the person looking straight back. The man.

“I mean a _name,”_ Kylo says. “A name that _you_ call yourself by, not somebody else. Not what somebody else calls you.”

“I already told you…”

“No, you didn’t,” Kylo interrupts, growing frustrated. “A name _you_ use. In _your_ head. When you talk to yourself. When you talk in your head to yourself, what do you call yourself?”

“Well, sometimes people just call me _Eight-Seven._ I guess that’s my name.”

Kylo sighs.

“Nevermind.”

FN-2187 hadn’t noticed it before. Perhaps it was because when still at his post, before he’d dried his body and clothes, Ren had his back to him. But now he’s this close, 2187 can see the fresh marks on his superior’s arm.

“You _did_ breach today,” 2187 whispers, staring at the marks.

Kylo tucks the arm away beneath the cotton sheet.

“No, I didn’t,” he says quietly.

 _“Yes,_ you did, I can _see,”_ the stormtrooper murmurs, frowning. “Don’t lie.”

“I’m _not.”_

The men stare at each other.

 _“Finn,”_ the stormtrooper whispers, after several minutes pass again between them in silence.

“Huh?”

“That’s what I call myself in my head.”


	6. Forbidden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Night 2. Part 3 of 3.

“Now you have to tell me.”

“Why?” Kylo asks.

They’re still opposed beneath the bed sheet, staring. The soldier leans in.

“Because I told you.”

Kylo snorts with derision.

“I don’t have to tell _you_. You’re a stormtrooper.”

“Then I’m just gonna keep on calling you _sir_ ,” the stormtrooper hisses.

“Well I’ve already asked you _not_ to,” Kylo hisses back.

“You are _stubborn_ ,” the soldier flares, finally saying the thing he’s been thinking. “Do you know that?”

Kylo says nothing. He does know that.

“And you are also very _fussy,”_ the stormtrooper adds. “Know _that?”_

He leans back, and glances again at the marks on Ren’s arm.

 _“And_ you need a medkit for those.”

“They’re _surface_ cuts,” Kylo glowers, and this time he leans in. “Medkits aren’t for _surface_ cuts, they’re for _injuries.”_

“Cuts _are_ injuries,” the soldier scolds, failing again to keep his tone even as he shifts in once more, obscuring Ren’s view of almost everything but his own resolute face _._ “I’m getting the kit.”

But the soldier doesn’t move.

Kylo’s been holding his breath again. He’s also been clenching his jaw. He loosens it. He wants to say things, several of them. He wants to do things too, and several of those, so maybe if he could just sort out the words then all the other things he wants to happen will do so after that. Kylo frowns. He lets his eyes linger on the view he has from here _._ Why is it so fucking difficult to…?

“What are you like in the daytime?” the stormtrooper’s asking now, frustrated again by the lack of response from Ren. “Do you do this with day watchmen, too? Does _everybody_ have to suffer you like this or just me?”

They’re rhetorical questions. The soldier’s still seeking answers but he’s learning not to expect them. He needs to keep asking though, and he needs to keep talking or the nerves will start to affect him again, and it’s the gaps that do it. The stretches of silence punctuated by snark; that combination infuriates him about Ren.

And yet somehow, amid the frustration, the soldier’s attention keeps drifting back to one place in a kind of respite from the bother, to linger where Ren’s head meets the pillow. There’s an impossible sphere of water from his shower still caught there in the tussle of his hair, suspended halfway along a course many others have clearly run but not this one, and the stormtrooper’s gaze flicks between those two points - the water and the eye - until it chooses one and settles there.

“ _Kylo,”_ the soldier whispers to the eye. “That’s your name. Right?”

Kylo swallows and traces the cotton threads of the bed sheet again with the tips of his fingers, feeling the weave, counting. The stormtrooper flattens his tongue against the roof of his own mouth, and just for good measure he seals his lips, too. The men continue to stare at each other in silence, until the soldier can’t hold his lips any longer, or contain his tongue.

“That’s a _yes,_ then,” he whispers again to the eye, and it twitches. “From now on, if you don’t say anything back, that means _yes._ Okay?”

“Finn,” Kylo murmurs.

The soldier blinks.

“It suits you. More than just a number.”

“It’s letters,” the stormtrooper mumbles, because all of a sudden it’s not as easy to speak as it was before. “I mean, there _are_ numbers, but we don’t just have those.”

“I know,” Kylo says softly.

“And it was only ever mostly when I was small. I just used to use that name sometimes. And…”

He pauses.

“Yes?” Kylo coaxes.

“I guess I still do.”

“What times?” Kylo asks, after a moment.

“What do you mean?”

“What times?” Kylo repeats. “You said you still use it. _When_ do you use it _?”_

“Tuanul,” the soldier whispers. “I used it there.”

“You don’t like thinking about that,” Kylo murmurs. “Do you? You don’t like thinking about that, and you don’t like thinking about that in front of me.”

Kylo leans in so far now their foreheads almost touch. Very slowly, he moves his hand across the surface of the bed, inching it forwards, until it rests just shy of the soldier’s own fingers, which are tucked beneath the pillow they’re now sharing.

 _“Rain,”_ Kylo whispers. “Remember?”

The stormtrooper’s still blinking. Kylo’s still watching him carefully.

“I said _remember.”_

“Yes,” the soldier whispers. His eyes feel damp. “I do.”

 _“Think_ about yourself like that,” Kylo breathes.

“I don’t want to.”

“You’re _afraid_ to.”

“I’m not.”

“You _are._ You’re afraid to use that name.”

“I’m afraid of _you_ using _that. Doing_ that to me.”

“Sensing?”

The stormtrooper swallows.

“You’re not afraid of that,” Kylo murmurs. “Or me. That’s an excuse. You’re afraid of who you are.”

“Stop it,” the soldier mumbles.

 _“No,”_ Kylo firms. “You tell me _nothing._ You leave me no choice but this, and I’m only trying to...”

“It’s _you_ who’s so quiet, not the other way ‘round, so don’t you _twist_ this again,” the stormtrooper spits. “How many of your questions have I answered now? And you _still_ haven’t answered a single one of mine. Your arm? What you want to be called? And why in the hell you keep on insisting…”

“I cut it,” Kylo says. “And I _did_ tell you that. I’m not a liar. Unlike you.”

The soldier purses his lips.

“I'm forbidden," Kylo concedes.

The soldier frowns.

“What do you mean _forbidden?_ Forbidden from _what?”_

“Saying it.”

The soldier rolls his eyes.

 _“_ For fuck’s sake, saying _what?_ Your _name?_ You’re forbidden from saying your _name?”_

Kylo goes silent again.

“Oh man, this is _ridiculous…_ I _am_ getting the kit, I’ve had so much more than enough of this sh _…"_

Kylo reaches out and places his hand on the stormtrooper’s bare upper arm.

“Take your hand off me,” he demands, and Kylo obeys.

“Don’t,” Kylo whispers.

Something occurs to the soldier then.

“You _want_ it,” he murmurs. “Not just punishment. You want _pain.”_

Kylo watches him thinking it through, voicing the thoughts as they arise. Fascinated.

“You want to _hurt…_ And you _goaded_ me... Oh man, all last night until I hurt you, you _goaded_ me... When you are _perfectly_ _prepared_ to inflict pain on _yourself._ You could have done it to _yourself.”_

“It’s _not the same_ when I do it,” Kylo says, feeling his stomach clench in frustration. “For fuck’s sake, how _literal_ do I have to be with you?”

“ _What?”_

“I’ve told you _fifty fucking times_ that I want _you_ to...”

“And I’ve said _no_ , just as many fucking times so don’t you dare make _me_ out to be some kind of laser-brain, _you_ are _so bad_ at…”

“Please,” Kylo urges again, so close to the soldier now that the tips of their noses are almost touching. “Please, _Finn.”_

Kylo feels it happen. A shift not made by the stormtrooper’s body - not just another tad closer - but a shift that happens inside him this time, until no longer does a soldier lie here beside Kylo but a _man._ A person so near him Kylo could taste him if he wanted, and in response Kylo’s chest swells in a way he doesn’t think it ever has. And when he hears the words that Finn says next that feeling almost makes him smile, or do something else. Something almost like tasting.

 _“If_ I do this,” Finn says. “You are gonna listen or I am gonna stop, and I am _very serious_ about that condition. And you had _better_ remember it.”

“I’ll listen,” Kylo whispers.

“And,” Finn continues, “You are gonna use the safeword when you’ve had enough or I am also gonna stop, and I am also _very serious_ about _that_ condition. So you had _better_ remember that, too. _Yes?”_

“Yes.”

“Well then, I need you to move,” Finn mutters, lifting his upper body, propping himself on a forearm. “Just a little bit, though, maybe just... Roll a little more? To your back? Or, you could sit up...”

Kylo does as he’s told. He rolls left. But only enough to be able to keep his knees bent so he can still face in towards Finn. He still wants to watch him. And Kylo holds his breath as Finn reaches out and brushes the tip of his thumb back and forth across Kylo’s left nipple. And, when it stiffens, he begins to squeeze it firm between the tips of his fingers, sometimes easing off if Kylo arches his back, or sometimes twisting if a sigh escapes his throat.

And that’s how they spend the rest of their second night together on the island; Kylo Ren watching Finn through hooded eyes as Finn continues to play with his nipple, halfway between pleasure and pain. But Kylo doesn't think it’s pain. In fact, he’s sure it's not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. Special thanks to Alsterwasser and Leoba for pre-reading. Also Applesith for the info about Kylo's name circa TFA and Melusine for the perfect insult <3\. This chapter has sat unfinished for ages and I could not have found the motivation to finish it without help.


End file.
